Vision: The Technology of Activating Hope - David Mitts

And Yahweh answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tablets, that he may run who reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it delays, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not delay. Habakkuk 2:2-3

We have been sharing about 3 eternal keys to abiding in the Lord, or if you like, in the Spirit of the Lord, faith, hope, and love. 

But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love. 1 Cor. 13:13. 

Click here to listen to "Vision-The Technology of Activating Hope"

Faith, hope, and love are entry points into the realm of the Spirit, which is the Kingdom of God. 

We have been pressing for hope as the anchor key to our future destiny. Love transforms our present. Faith transforms our past. Hope transforms our future. 

Today, I want to access the power to activate hope through vision. First, let me say that like most things of the kingdom, our definitions have to be reclaimed and transformed.  Words like “vision” have been neutered or made generic.  The power that is present in vision has been neutralized and made passive. It isn’t that vision isn’t still powerful. It’s just that most people don’t access the power with a conscious awareness of what they can do and why. 

First let’s return to Genesis, a good place to always start. 

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth."(Gen 1:26-28) 

Man was created in God’s image. We tend to think that this is speaking somehow about how God looked, physically.  Yet God said specifically that man cannot look on His face and live: 

But," he said, "you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live." (Exo 33:20) 

So the word image cannot mean what God looks like physically. So, what does image mean, in this context? I think a clue is in the phrase " God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." Male and female is the image of husband and wife completing one another.  This is the picture of relationship as the image of completion.  Paul declares this image as the image of Christ and the Church,  

"For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery--but I am talking about Christ and the church. (Eph 5:31-32) 

So, to be created in God’s image is to be created in relationship. I also think the use of the phrase “Our Image” is also a key, but the tendency to go to the Trinity as an automatic response is perhaps to disguise the people related part of this.  God wants us to see who we are and what is the purpose of our nature as relationship.   Even the term one-flesh can be a disguise.  We can think He is only talking about marriage.  He is speaking beyond that to the power of hope. 

In the image of plurality in relationship, one nation under God, one people connected by identity, comes the glimmer of true hope, true power. 

God says He blesses them.  Notice He doesn’t say He blessed Adam alone. No! He declares that Adam’s aloneness is not good. 

The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." (Gen 2:18) 

The Hebrew word translated as “alone” is “bad”. It means literally to be cut-off from the whole, to be outside the shelter of the home.  One way to think of this is isolation. Our Pastor used to say, “isolation breeds deception”.  I think the deception is the loss of the image of God which is designed to carry the blessing and true hope. 

Once we discover the image of relationship, we can begin to produce fruit.  There is no fruit without intimacy. There is no intimacy without trust.  There is no trust without hope.  

When God created us in His image, He created us for intimacy and His image requires it.  Trust is the foundation stone for intimacy and trust requires us to know one another. Then He blesses us in that place of knowing each other and that blessing is to multiply, be fruitful and have dominion. 

What is in opposition to that hope, that destiny, is our tendency to aloneness.  The fall from grace in the garden was at its root a fall from trust into the need to protect ourselves through trying to control our lives by thinking we can decide what is good what is evil or if you who is good and who is evil. 

Before I go further, I want to deal with something, so I’m not taken out of context.  There is true good and true evil in the world.  God defines it for us in Torah.  He tells us what is good and what is evil, and I am not saying that the goal is to lose sight of that.  We live in a fallen world full of evil and we need to be wise about that. Jesus taught us that: 

"Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves. Matthew 10:16  

There is no doubt there are wolves in the world and we need to wise and shrewd.  Yet Yeshua also emphasized that we are to be innocent as doves. 

How do we keep the innocence of the dove while being wise as the serpent? I think the key is in how we see things and how we see people and who we are as reflected by that seeing.   

You see it is in the image and likeness that we find true hope. When we begin to see that we are created for relationship and that our hope comes from aligning with the divine image we can begin to succeed in life. 

  

I once heard my friend Brig say that we don’t get what we want in life but what we picture.  The image we carry on the inside affects our strength, our ability to achieve victory in our lives against the kingdom of darkness. 

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, (2Co 10:3-5) 

Ok. This scripture is a scripture about activating the power of hope.  We are in a war.  The war is not a flesh war, even though the outcomes are in the flesh.  The war is about fortresses.  

The fortresses must be destroyed for us to advance to our destiny. The Bible calls the walls of the fortress’s speculations or in some translations, imaginations.  What is a speculation? Or a reasoning? Or an imagination? It is a thought construct that we carry on the inside. It is literally the image we carry inside ourselves. Paul tells us this is a series of thoughts that are raised up against the “knowledge of God”.  

These are called lofty things. This means to me that they are things that carry heavenly power. Paul tells us that these thoughts are in rebellion to Christ.  What does it mean to have thoughts in rebellion to Christ? I think it may be connected back to the image.  I think that we are to carry the image in our thoughts. 

Let’s look at one more perspective on this and then we’ll do an activation. 

Turn with me to Romans 1:18-25 

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies might be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. (Rom 1:18-25) 

We live in the era being described here: There is a wrath of God revealed from heaven.  It is against all ungodliness and all unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. 

Remember righteousness is all about the restoration of what is right. 

What that is right is being suppressed? 

The knowledge of God which is where? 

Within them.  On the inside, in our thoughts and imaginations there is an access to the truth of God.  The image of God lives in us. Now He lives in us in Yeshua. 

And He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first-born from the dead; so that He Himself might come to have first place in everything. (Col 1:15-18) 

This is who lives in us. He is more than just an individual named Jesus. He is also the true image which includes the Body of Christ. Can you see it? This is the true hope of glory. Not just our individual destiny but our destiny as one body! 

Romans 1 tells us that we traded this image of oneness in Him and Him in us for the corruptible image of aloneness and separation of identity.  In this, we became reduced to a fear-based lusting creature.  Our God shrunk as well from the One who unites us as One New Man to the one who serves our individual selves and our selfish agenda. 

Yet it has always been about what we see on the inside, the fortress we build in our imagination and in our worship. 

Activation: 

Close your eyes and picture yourself as mighty. You are not alone but are a cell of the Body of Christ.  Your might comes through unity and harmony. See yourself accomplishing your life and your goals as part of the accomplishment of the Body, of Christ and the Church. The more you associate the more agreement you will have and the more power.